"What does 'abortion' mean? It's not a word we often find in textbooks, is it?" Hideharu Tajima, a teacher at Shakujii High School in Tokyo's Nerima Ward, asked students in his English-language class.
During the lesson for third-graders, Tajima handed out copies of an article from an English-language newspaper about the increasing incidence of sexually transmitted diseases among Japanese young people and the lack of sex education in schools.
Reading the story aloud, Tajima questioned his students about the meaning of words appearing in the story, and asked them to select the most appropriate of several suggested headlines.